


Artiface of Expression

by upquarkAO3



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sorry?, The Easter Bunnies Fic Challenge, This is prolly straight-up crack from a tyred brayne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 18:37:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14171079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/upquarkAO3/pseuds/upquarkAO3
Summary: For a Fic Prompt! :-DWho: DanWhere: Linda’s officeWhat: Clown/Mermaid paintingOptional word: Earthquake





	Artiface of Expression

[ - ]

 

“So.”

“So…?”

And then an even longer pause than after he’d first come in. Finally, even Linda’s abundant patience blew out of her just as fast as the umpteenth sigh from one Daniel Espinoza: newest addition to the PIA File of People I Know IRL and Yet Must See Professionally, FFS. She uncrossed her legs, planted her elbows on her knees and then her chin in her palms. Lacquered nails ticked along the frames of her glasses marking the seconds like the sweep hand of a keratinized watch.

It sounded like teacup poodle nails skittering over linoleum, but at least **some** thing in here was making SOME noise.

After yet another heavy sigh from Dan followed by exactly zero words (useful or otherwise), Linda decided to try a little jibing humor. Couldn’t hurt, right?

“So….is this a silent movie I’m watching here or what? I mean, I’m just wondering if I’ve got time to grab popcorn and a soda before anything interesting happens.”

Despite the ‘itchy in his mindskin’ feeling Dan had and yes, more than a little personal chagrin, he laughed.

“Sorry. SORRY. It’s just, I mean…well, dammit.” He nearly whispered the last, but Linda heard. And more importantly, understood.

She straightened up in her chair and removed her glasses to polish them on the hem of her skirt. After putting them back on, she eyed the tangle of nerves practically vibrating in self-sequestered misery simultaneously mere feet and yet a million miles away on her couch. After only a second or two a small smile curled around one corner of her mouth and she tilted her head to one side, watching him.

“It’s just a little weird for you, maybe? You are neither the first nor last person to feel that way here.”

Dan visibly relaxed. The lines in his forehead softened and he leaned back in the cushions.

“Yeah. Even with all the stuff I know I need to do a better job sorting out, getting some help doing it is still a little…”

“Uh, **weird**? Like I said? Yes, I got that. Degrees, you know. Plural. Gives me an edge.”

Dan’s next chuckle was far warmer as he watched Linda twirl a wrist Wheel of Fortune-style back toward the educational pedigrees behind her desk.

“Yeah. But I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen more…er…interesting problems than just me trying to gel with my world better.”

“You have NO idea.” She knew he really didn’t. If he had any inkling about the representatives of various planes of existence that darkened her door on the regular she suspected he’d be more okay with smoothing out the finite wrinkles in his own life. She also knew he needed to feel a little better about the whole process for any of this to work.

She wished she could tell him, if only to introduce some perspective. But HIPPA was a pretty occlusive mouthguard, so…oh well.

Linda briefly considered using the phrase _‘snowballs’ chance in Hell’_ but decided that would be inappropriate. Which was sort of funny, considering what other truly inappropriate things she’d done. Okay, LOTS of inappropriate things. Several of which had happened on that very couch. One of her favorite incidents right where Dan’s polyestered ass was parked, s’matter of fact.

Before she started either snickering or blushing (both of which would have been not only inappropriate – _jeez, could she think that word_ **_one_ ** **_more_ ** **_time?_ ** \- but inexplicable to Dan as well, and likely NOT helping him to calm down any) she simply took in a breath and stated smoothly, “Don’t worry about what anyone else does or says here. This is about you and me; and honesty is the best policy for the good work we’ll accomplish. Besides, sometimes the people that talk the most have the least to say and it just adds another layer of obfuscation to often complex issues. The world can be challenging enough on its own without us making life more difficult for ourselves on purpose, don’t you think?”

Well no shit, Sherlock. That actually made some damn sense. Hearing her own words aloud let them really sink in - for herself, too. And the blanket truth of that statement recalibrated both of them.

Dan stopped blistering a hole in his kneecap with his tense glare and looked up at her. Stopped mashing his shoulders into his earlobes. Switched out his (annoying) sighs for a deep, clarifying breath. Then another. Smiled softly.

“All right. Thank you.”

She nodded. Feeling mutually better AND ready to get down to business they both grinned at each other.

Just as Hell broke loose.

Well, not really. No fire, brimstone or other nasty clichés.

But a decently-sized tectonic belch on the Richter scale still rattled their bones, several items on her desk and some frames off the walls. Including the most obnoxious one of all. The clown-mermaid painting Lucifer had foisted upon her skewered itself on Linda’s umbrella stand as if it could not wait to shuffle off its own mortal coil fast enough.

The shaking lasted for almost a minute and a half. Doctor and patient rose to their feet cautiously, bracing bodies and minds then looking around and asking one another if they were okay. Then they both looked down at the pitifully rent painting.

Dan started speaking slowly. “Well, the rip’s not that bad; more of a puncture, really. Maybe it could be repaired – OH! Well, all right then.”

The business end of Linda’s sharp heeled faux-Louboutin had just put the paint debacle out of its misery for good. She heaved a satisfactory sigh. And smiled.

“You know,” she said, while tucking an errant wisp of hair behind her ear, “I’d love to say I’m sorry about that.”

Dan side-eyed her. “So, that honesty-being-good-policy thing? Not a blanket statement?”

She shrugged. “Eh. You know they call it the ‘art of practicing medicine’ right?”

“Yeah, so?”

She poked him on the elbow as a wide grin broke across her face. “Well, artistic license covers creativity and destructive opportunity, bucko. And guess what else?”

Dan’s eyebrows were busy running for the hills anyhow and finished in a sprint at her next words.

“Patient-doctor confidentiality goes both ways. You canNOT tell Lucifer about this.”

Dan’s mouth quirked. “You don’t think he’ll notice it’s gone? Because ‘whew’.” He mimed wiping his brow and Linda could not help but agree. That thing was such an eyesore it would be next to impossible someone wouldn’t notice the sheer relief of its absence. Even from its place behind her file cabinet. Even Lucifer.

“Well, yes. Perhaps he might. Probably?” Linda briefly considered the dichotomy of her most self-absorbed patient’s magpie fascination with random detail. That devil was just aggravating enough TO notice it gone and yap about it. “I’ll just tell him I have a new patient with a clown phobia so I took it home. Wow, I’m an idiot…I should have thought of that a loooong time ago. It’s not like he stops by there…anymore.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Like nothing else.”

The moment of peace didn’t last nearly long enough.

Linda looked up as Dan hissed.

“Aftershocks?” she asked, worriedly. She hadn’t felt anything herself, but Dan certainly seemed apprehensive all of a sudden. “Dan?” She repeated his name a few more times, her voice rising in pitch as he either didn’t, or couldn’t answer.

Finally he pointed with a shaking finger at where her right foot was still firmly planted through the canvas and Linda understood the problem. Well, sort of.

She understood his REACTION.

She had no way of understanding **what was actually happening**.

To HER.

Some of the lurid colors in that horrible painting were swarming up her leg; soft coils of sour puce and mindslap pink winding as high as her calf – and beyond.

She shrieked, the sound high and sharp and stark enough to finally jolt Dan from his temporary paralysis to bodily yank her off the ground. Their sudden movement was matched by all the colors: they exploded from the tattered art and gripped both people within a swirling miasma of visual cacophony.

And Jesus, where was that horrible caterwauling coming from?!

Oh, right. That would be her. Maybe Dan, too?

The last thing Linda registered before her shattered mind went completely offline was the terrified look in Dan’s grey eyes. Just before their shine was dulled under a kaleidoscopic phantasm of colors.

_Oh Dan. I’m so sorry._

_Thank you for trying._

The scene from The Matrix where the liquefied mirror surged down Neo’s throat scorched static across her imagination, except it was violating her everything. And his. Awful combinations of putrid hues swarmed over, around and through their minds and bodies like South Park’s TrapperKeeper riff on that anime movie – what was it again? – oh yeah – Akira. Pulling them _?somewhere?_ caught on barbs of horror like helpless frogs on a jigger line.

Linda’s higher reasoning burbled to the surface for half a nanosecond’s worth of rational thought in order to rebuke herself for thinking of peculiar cinema in crisis situations before she continued freaking out.

And then she was so lost there was no thinking at all.

~ * ~

She had no idea of how much time…

_(time?whatwastime?anidea?aperspective?adimension?aplaneofexistence?everything?nothingatall?)_

…had passed when a somewhat familiar bark of a voice tickled her consciousness, but how could anything be recognizable here? Wherever ‘here’ was.

It came again, and this time Linda could just make out actual words. They sounded angry, and she recognized the tone before the words braying the flavor of it.

“I SAID, ‘get OFF of them’ or ELSE!’

A tintinnabulation of the tintstinstints swarmed around them angrily and Linda clamped the hands she was pretty sure she no longer possessed in this dimension over her imaginary ears.

“Fine, dickhead. Be that way. You asked for it.”

The blinding shrieks got louder, the awful colors erupting into a lashing frenzy of tendrils.

And then the noise and blur stopped as suddenly as the dark blade did flashing through it all. Linda’s mind mewled and quivered as the metallic glint _(snicker-snack, jabberwock; by vorpal sword art thou unmade)_ dissected the dying strands of color still cocooning her. She felt herself being pulled from the nightmare, but it was still….too much.

Only human.

As she faded to black once more, the last things she registered were Maze’s face and her soft voice teasing, “Oh good - there you are. What’s up, buttercup? Oops, looks like I’m gonna lose you anyhow. Man, humans faint at the most inconvenient times. It’s cool though. I gotcha.”

And then nothing.

And nothing was peaceful and lovely.

Sometime later...how much later? It had felt like forever in - wherever they’d been – Linda realized she was back in her office, slumped down on the sin cushion with Maze talking to Dan at the other end of the couch. She had her pert rear parked on the coffeetable while helping him hold a glass of water to his mouth.

“You don’t think anything that ugly wouldn’t be Hell-spawned, now do you? C’mon. Thought you were smarter than that. Well, you at least,” Maze waggled a couple of fingers at Linda’s blearily hatching eyes then turned back to snare Dan in an evaluative amber gaze. “Jury still out here. You do pretty stupid shit sometimes. Like grabbing people out of stuff you can’t possibly comprehend. Dumbass.” Her last word was said with affection, though. Maybe even a little respect.

He spluttered on his water. Linda wasn’t sure if was an actual objection or if he was just still trembling so badly that he couldn’t swallow properly. She tried to squeak out a defense since he _had_ tried to help, but Maze ignored both of their flails and continued to speak to Dan. “Dumb yeah, but brave.” Her voice mellowed further. “You had to be scared. Color imps are the literal worst. So damn grouchy.”

Linda felt her forehead pucker like the mouth of an old lady slurping a lemon juice and bleach cocktail. “A what now?” she eloquently choked out.

“Color imp, duh.” Maze said this with the jaded pragmatism of a beat-cop longing for retirement.“Like any demon, these guys can temporarily possess the weak-minded or incapacitated. Color imps usually go for artists. They crawl up in their frontal lobes or something and get those poor saps to spew them out on canvas or whatever. That way they get to be out in the world and sort of immortalized here, too – as long as no one destroys the works they’re in. They get kind of pissed off if that happens. As you got to experience, obviously.” Maze shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know why they bother. The pieces they get painted into are usually so fugly they wind up in basements or closets or…” her hand flapped to indicate other claustrophobic spots not worth her effort to mention aloud. “At least this one got to hear humans waxing poetic about their lives and see some daylight before it got sent back.”

“Sent back where?”

They both looked at Dan as his words finished wheezing out of his throat and as terrible as he sounded, Linda was so relieved to see him without being riddled with skewers of hideous color she felt her own throat clot. He was still a little pale, but high spots of pink had started to glow on his cheeks during Maze’s commentary. Linda tried desperately to ignore the fact that this particular shade looked a lot like the highlights on the clown’s nose. Color imps could only possess someone once, right? Maybe she should ask.

Fortunately she was broken out of her unwanted reverie by Maze. She looked over at Linda, then back at Dan, a slow, sinister smile wicking to the surface of her beautiful face.

“Oh Danny-Boy, I’ve got SUCH a tale to tell you…”

As she began, Linda thought it was a great thing that Dan had already decided to start therapy.

And seriously reconsidered filling her coffeetable water pitcher with vodka from now on, too. As the rate of improbable persons and events increased here, providing a little inebriation for her clientele just might not be the worst thing for them, liver toxicity issues aside.

Her too, come to think of it.

And she’d start with the secret stash in the side table.

Right now.

Yeah. Physician, to heal thy own damned self be one true thing.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. Sheesh. I was happy to accept prompts because my 'fun-writing' mind muscles are straight up ornery of late. But...*quizzical look* here it is?
> 
> (goes back under rock and hides)


End file.
